My Week in Film (9/28 - 10/4)

Ossos (1997)
(Directed by Pedro Costa)

Finally made it through this. I think I've seen the first 30 or 40 minutes of this like three times but something's always stopped me. It definitely reminded me of Bresson except less concentrated. Costa's editing got carried over from Casa de Lava. This shit is really confusing. Well, probably less so, but the editing doesn't really clarify, it probably makes things even more maddening and confusing. Except that they aren't. It's such a dingy film, too, probably the dingiest I've ever seen. Most of it takes in a slum of sorts and the contrast between the white walls of the city apartments and that place is huge. The acting is pretty mannered and stuff. They stand there staring off into space suggesting things that we couldn't possibly guess at. They also smoke a lot. Sometimes it gets a little ridiculous like when The Father just suddenly drops to a bed or when he refuses to move so Tina has to drag him through the floor. Really? That's just weird. While I was mostly just kind of not really interested in what happened, there is this one scene that I found to be completely heartbreaking. The Father sits with his son in some random bathroom stall. He takes small bites out of a sandwich, chews it up and then feeds it to the kid. After he does this, he takes swigs of alcohol. It's so fucking sad. Anyway, Costa, you confuzzle me. What do I do with you? TELL ME, SWEET BABY JESUS

★★1/2

Coming to America (1988)*
(Directed by John Landis)

This is definitely Eddie Murphy's finest moment. He plays it completely straight, always sticking to his character. His naivete and sweet honesty are the real anchor of the film while everyone else does a bunch of hilarious stuff. The barbershop stuff is completely hilarious and Murphy's interactions with Arsenio Hall are incredible, too. Yeah, yeah, everything's funny. The romance elements are pretty good even if by the end of the film the movie forgets to be funny and gets all sentimental on you, you don't really mind because Murphy is so great. It's hard to dislike a movie that incorporates zebras running in the background as a joke. Get it, it's AFRICA! What's also funny is that there's pretty much three people white people in the entire movie - Louis Anderson is one of them. This is Eddie Murphy's America. Funny, funny, funny. Soul GLO is one of the funniest things I've ever seen/heard in my life. The royal penis is clean, roujin. Well, what can you do?

★★★

Death and the Devil (1973)
(Directed by Stephen Dwoskin)

I liked Behindert's persistent sense of intimacy and that's also here in spades, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for relentlessly invasive closeups. It's funny. I was really into the film at first but I guess it just wore me out. It also didn't help matters that I thought the 30 + minute dialogue scene was excruciatingly boring. It was just some talk about sex and women or something and while sort of interesting, it just was maddeningly slow for me and besides some stellar treatment of the human face, by film's end I was mostly just not very interested... I suck


★★

Zombieland (2009)
(Directed by Ruben Fleischer)

It was okay. Everything was played for comedy which suits me fine, but, I don't know. I guess it just isn't particularly special to me. It's just kinda whatever. I like Jesse Eisenberg but I got pretty tired of his voiceover pretty quickly. Yeah, I get it, you were a nerd and were wasting your life before all this happened and you've never had a girlfriend or something. Don't trust people! Jeez! Woody is great, duh, I liked his shameless crying. The sequence in the Hollywood mansion is definitely the best part. Lots of really funny stuff there even if it does put on hold their journey or whatever, but I guess you gotta pad out your running time somehow. So, laughs were had, blood was spilled, roujin was amused. Mostly. But... I really hated that on-screen text. I don't know why but that shit just annoys the hell out of me. Blergh. Average. Average roujin average ninjas average versus average self.

★★

This was a bad week...

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Coming to America